Steve Benen: …..Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace apparently faced some criticism from the right over this, and he apologized, telling Fox News viewers, “I messed up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.” ….It’s a shame Wallace felt the need to apologize for this, because he accidentally asked a good question, even if he regrets it now.

Societal norms apparently dictate that unhinged candidates who have no business running for president be shielded from such unpleasantness, but Michele Bachmann is arguably the most ridiculous person in Washington. She proudly embraces bizarre conspiracy theories; she routinely says crazy things on national television; she pretends to grasp public policies she doesn’t understand; and her worldview is comparable to someone who’s suffered a serious head trauma. Even as the Republican Party leaps off a right-wing cliff, Bachmann stands out for unique brand of madness.

Given this, of course response hosts should ask whether she’s a serious person. Bachmann doesn’t deserve deference; she deserves ridicule. I thought “are you a flake” was actually a rather polite way of asking a legitimate question about an unqualified candidate.

LA Times: Rep. Michele Bachmann has been propelled into the 2012 presidential contest in part by her insistent calls to reduce federal spending….

But she and her family have benefited personally from government aid, an examination of her record and finances shows. A counseling clinic run by her husband has received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, money that in part came from the federal government. A family farm in Wisconsin, in which the congresswoman is a partner, received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies.

And she has sought to keep federal money flowing to her constituents. After publicly criticizing the Obama administration’s stimulus program, Bachmann requested stimulus funds to support projects in her district….

….despite her broadsides against “socialized medicine,” Bachmann’s husband, Marcus, applied for public funds for his counseling clinic, Bachmann & Associates. Since 2006, he has received nearly $30,000, according to Minnesota state records…

Michele Bachmann lists the Lake Elmo, Minn.-based clinic – which aims to provide “quality Christian counseling in a sensitive, loving environment,” according to its website – as one of her assets on her financial disclosure forms.

Another of Bachmann’s assets – a family farm owned by her late father-in-law, Paul Bachmann – received nearly $260,000 in federal money between 1995 and 2008, largely from corn and dairy subsidies …. Paul Bachmann died in May 2009, but the congresswoman retains a partnership in the farm.

Bachmann said in December that the subsidies went to her in-laws and she never received “one penny” from the farm, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. However, in financial disclosure forms, she reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.

AP: ..…Examining 24 of her statements, Politifact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service found just one to be fully true and 17 to be false (seven of them “pants on fire” false)….. A look at some of her recent statements and how they compare with the facts:

BACHMANN: “The farm is my father-in-law’s farm. It’s not my husband and my farm. It’s my father-in-law’s farm. And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm.” — On “Fox News Sunday.”

THE FACTS: In personal financial disclosure reports required annually from members of Congress, Bachmann reported that she holds an interest in a family farm in Independence, Wis., with her share worth between $100,000 and $250,000…..

BACHMANN: “Overnight we are hearing that potentially 10 to 30,000 people could have been killed in the strike.” — Criticizing Obama in May for the “foolish” U.S. intervention in Libya, and citing what she said were reports of a civilian death toll from a NATO strike as high as 30,000.

THE FACTS: The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, said in late April that U.S. officials have seen reports that 10,000 to 30,000 people may have died in Moammar Gadhafi’s crackdown on protesters and the fighting between rebels and pro-government forces, but it is hard to know if that is true. He was speaking about all casualties of the conflict; no one has attributed such a death toll to NATO bombing alone, much less to a single strike.

BACHMANN: “It’s ironic and sad that the president released all of the oil from the strategic oil reserve. … There’s only a limited amount of oil that we have in the strategic oil reserve. It’s there for emergencies.” — On CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

THE FACTS: Obama did not empty all the oil from the strategic reserve, as Bachmann said. He approved the release of 30 million barrels, about 4 percent of the 727 million barrels stored in salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana coasts….

BACHMANN: “One. That’s the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office.” — Comment to a conservative conference in Iowa in March.

THE FACTS: The Obama administration issued more than 200 new drilling permits before the Gulf oil spill alone. Over the past year, since new safety standards were imposed, the administration has issued more than 60 shallow-water drilling permits. Since the deep water moratorium was lifted in October, nine new wells have been approved.

OT, chipsticks when you get a chance please post a clip from the Gayle King show, she played the limo kids and asked her viewers to check out the Obamadiary. This is getting out of hand hearing the obamadiary mentioned on national tv shows😯😯

I’m just glad to know that there is a modicum of sense in Chris Wallace’s head. Even if he had to take back the question, it shows that he (and more than a few others) know that Michelle Bachmann is as crazy as they come. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest, certifiably nuts, coo-coo for cocoa puffs, batshit crazy.

Is there anyone over there at FAX, I mean FOX, with any backbone? When they ask a question. a simply question, they don’t have to back down and act like a coward. I’m sure Mike Wallace wouldn’t have apologize, but then again Chris ain’t Mike. Oh and to answer that question, YES Bachmann is a flake!!!!!

Hahahaha …lisa. I saw the full video on Morning Joe this morning and Joe was pissed off that Chris Wallace dared to ask her if she was a flake. Wallace is a wuss for apologizing. He felt the question was credible enough to ask; so why should he apologize? Michele Bachmann’s response was that she’s not a flake because she got a doctorate in Federal Tax Law from East Bumfuck University and she’s a lawyer. Yeah she’s a lawyer and teaparty patriot who didn’t know that the battleshots for Revolution began in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts not New Hampshire. What pisses me off about her and other teabaggers is; if you’re going to model yourself after the Boston Tea Party then you’d better know US History and US Government like the back of your hand. If you’re going to run on taxes, then you should know that taxes under Barack Obama have never been lower than they are now since President Eisenhower had it at a 90% rate.

Chris shouldn’t have asked her if she was a flake, he should have asked her point blank if she was a raving lunatic who had been visited by aliens.

And she doesn’t have the knowledge or understanding of The Constitution or our founding documents that she brandishes about. Shit, she could not even face a challenge to debate The Constitution from a 10th grader. Or a challenge from another high school student to debate the seperation of church and state issue. She is a theocrat, and IMO an extremist, and mostly talking out of the wrong orifice.

Bravo Benen…..I hope we hear more voices with the courage to speak openly and honestly!

As a Minnesotan, I apologize to the nation, IMO she is an enormous embarrassment. I had no idea that there were so many unhinged in my state’s population. It is very dangerous to be ignorant, willfull or otherwise.

I thought it was a bold question to ask, but it shows what Chris Wallace sees and hears from Bachman. As a United States voter, he can ask that question that way, but as a reporter on any televised program, he should have searched his Thesaurus to find another word for what he really meant. I’m happy he went there, but an apology had to be given because it was directed to a person running for the highest office in the United States. (silently i’m cheering Chris Wallace – yeah!!!)

The Obama campaign quickly responded to Michele Bachmann’s claim that we can’t afford four more years of Barack Obama, by filleting Bachmann based on her own voting record.

During her speech launching her campaign Bachmann said,

We cannot continue to kick the can of our problems down the road, because they are problems of today and not tomorrow.
We cannot continue to rack up debt on the backs of future generations.
We can’t afford an unconstitutional health plan that costs too much and is worth so little.
And we can’t afford four more years of failed leadership at home and abroad.
We can’t afford four more years of millions of Americans out of work or in jobs that pay too little to support their families.
We can’t afford four more years of a housing crisis that is devaluing our homes and making home ownership impossible for many Americans.
We can’t afford four more years of a foreign policy that leads from behind and doesn’t stand up for our friends and stand up to our enemies.
We can’t afford four more years of Barack Obama.

In a statement OFA fired back,

“Congresswoman Bachmann talks about reclaiming the American Dream but her policies would erode the path to prosperity for middle class families. She voted for a budget plan that would extend tax cuts for the richest Americans on the backs of seniors and the middle class while ending Medicare as we know it. Congresswoman Bachmann introduced legislation to repeal Wall Street oversight – risking a repeat of the financial crisis — and while she voted to preserve subsidies for oil and gas companies she opposes making the investments necessary to enhance America’s competitiveness and create the jobs of the future.”

Short, sweet and to the point. Michele Bachmann may be a tea party darling and she is beloved by the hard right, but she would be surgically dissected by Obama team in a fall campaign. Her voting record is chocked full of goodies that are 30-60 second attacks ads waiting to happen.

This post from Politicus USA just made me giddy. This is the kind of rapid fire response that is needed. The campaign needs to be relentless in calling out the lies. Can you believe the Bachmann voting record?? Unbelievable.

——————————————————————–
Bachmann voted NO on food safety. She voted NO on extending unemployment benefits, and she voted NO on extending the flood insurance program. She also voted NO on financial reform, and NO small business lending. She voted YES to abolish the practice of federal funding of presidential elections. She voted NO on the repeal of DADT. She voted NO on the expansion of hate crimes legislation. In 2007, she voted NO on the establishment of the Office of Congressional Ethics, and she voted a big fat NO on pay as you go. (As you know only a true fiscal conservative would reject the idea that programs actually have to be paid for before they are passed).

The paragraph above isn’t even the big stuff. Bachmann wants to cut veterans benefits and their Social Security disability. She is all for the Ryan budget and the killing of Medicare, and she supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
——————————————————————–

Can you imagine if she won the republican primary? The Obama campaign team would not have to debunk her record, the press and other msm outlets would hand over the info to him on a platter because they’d be scared shitless out of their minds at the thought of her becoming President.😆

And folks, we know what to do. Let’s get to tweeting, facebooking and e-mailing this out. We cannot allow her campaign managersor the media to disinfect this woman. She has been deep down in the sewer, and that’s just a part of it, let alone her very destructive voting record.

Game on. I know some people will say don’t take her seriously, but we don’t want the media to try to clean her up and gloss over her record.

Batshitcrazy Bachmann is stealing Sarah-What’s-Her-Name’s thunder for the female crazy of the Republican Party.

I hope she gets the nomination, there are countless videos out there documenting her insanity, the one that comes to mind for me is her Tea Party response to President Obama’s SOTU and she’s looking at the WRONG camera. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease let Bachmann win the nomination!😀

Have you ever noticed that not one, NOT ONE, of the more traditional Republican women, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Libby Dole, and their ilk have NEVER OPENED THEIR MOUTHS to support CC (Certifiably Crazy) Bachmann or the Grifter, Half-term Quitter?

From a Republican woman’s viewpoint, I figure they must just be embarrassed. But then, like I’ve said in other threads, I don’t really understand how anyone can be a Republican…

It’s not understandable how any female can vote for or be a Republican, seeing how misogynist the men in the Republican Party are, and how they’ve done everything possible to legalize rape and defund Planned Parenthood.

no problem here. And I usually don’t like using the word “bitch” when used toward women, but for CC Bachman? You got no problem with me, no problem at all… used in ALL of its meanings. Hmmm…Yup, she still fits the definition.

Just goes to show that just because a person finishes college, doesn’t mean he or she is educated.

What kind of America does she want to live in? The President says he wants to live in an America where people don’t go broke when they get sick, and elderly people can live in dignity and security, plus Americans take care of each other. Bachman wants to live in Somalia.

This is a comment from a blogger by the Name JORaze of WSY, This is good news. Your morning schadenfraude: DKos’ hits for the past year. The haven’t logged 1M hits per month since last July. Down 15% in visits. They even lost 200K hits in the last 3 months alone. Meanwhile Obama Diary, BlackWaterDog and The People’s View are hopping and on the rise; and of course, WSY, which gets over 100 comments on the morning and evening thread. Add this to the fact that PBO has gotten more donors so far than the last campaign and we’re up to a good start. The pragmati ain’t studying these folk at all.

So is there a difference between John Wayne (the actor) and John Wayne Gacy (the serial killer)…According to Bachman she would like to emulate the latter ( http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0611/Wrong_John_Wayne.html?showall)
What is it? 4 hrs into her announcement….oh dear tiny baby Jesus please let Sarah get in the race- I will lose at least 20 lbs laughing at these loons

Hey folks,, I am soo off topic here, but I’m really at a loss and thought possibly I may not be the only person experiencing this problem: Since yesterday I have been unable to link or access facebook, youtube, twitter. In fact the twitter buttom/link isn’t even showing up for me here at TOD. Now all this occured on my laptop.. thus I thought perhaps it was an hp problem.. I spent 6 SIX hours last night on the phone with HP wherein we ultimately cleared my entire laptop and reprogrammed it… also deleted my Norton security (in case it was security settings).. downloaded both google chrome & firefox.. all to no avail.. still unable to access those three websites.

Then..

Today I got on my son’s desktop, it is NOT networked to my computer.. and guess what? Yep, I’m unable to access twitter, facebook or youtube… thus the only thing his computer and mine have in common are Windows & our internet provider… the internet provider is receiving no other complaints like this and have no solutions. My son has windows xp and I have windows 7.. thus two different windows programs!! And yet we are both experiencing the exact same problem… anyhow, if anyone of you have also encountered this.. please please let me know. I just am dumbfounded at this point, and very frustrated because I use both facebook and twitter daily to share everything here on TOD and BWD’s site.

HI sherijr, so sorry you’re having all those problems with the site, it’s been endlessly glitchy recently and WordPress just haven’t been able to work it out after I contacted them. They assume it’s either a browser or server problem for individual users, they can’t see any problems from their end and they say they’ve looked at the site with all the browsers. I use Firefox and can see all those buttons, but you’ve tried Firefox too and you’re still having trouble – I’m baffled.

Hey chips my friend.. my problem seems to have been an internet provider issue.. turns out there were some other folks experiencing the inability to get twitter, you tube and facebook .. I have been able to ‘repair’ it thanks to my local provider… however.. now I can’t access IE at all on my laptop (and the internet guy was at a loss too), but my son can on his desktop. So I haven’t got a clue. Also the twitter button is back on here for me. Let me just say that I am sure that this was not a wordpress issue in my case, because I couldn’t even acess those sites via a search engine- no matter what I did they wouldn’t come up on our computers.. For now I am able to. Unfortunately I have to start from scratch setting my computer passwords, etc. back up, finally got my security back on. I have spent literally 16 hours on this with my local computer repair shop, my HP support, my internet provider and my wee little brain🙂 and frankly none of them had a clue until about two hours ago! Right now I haven’t figured out to make my print bigger on screen with firefox.. thus I can barely read what I’m writing.. so off to do more learning🙂 Looks like I missed all kinds of stuff today.. I feel so out of the loop!

And thank you THEO for ‘following’ me on twitter!! So glad I was finally able to get on there🙂

Oh flip sherijr, what a pain in the butt. To be honest, the emails from WordPress went waaaaaaaaaaay over my head, but it’s interesting that they mentioned internet provider issues as being a possible cause of people’s problems with this and other blogs – they said something about corrupted databases (??), but that meant nothing to me! I really hope everything is back to normal for you SOON!

thank you my dear.. I feel much more ‘connected’ this evening thats for sure🙂 just trying to get everything setup again. Thank you.. I do miss my Internet Explorer though.. but so far I can’t complain about Firefox. Thanks again for responding to me, I appreciate that~

Michele Bachmann, who just yesterday lied on Fox News about benefiting from farm subsidies but has yet to be asked to resign from the House for “lying” to the public, announced her presidential candidacy in Waterloo, Iowa today with a new bundle of coy inaccuracies.

But this is Michele Bachmann running for the GOP nomination. It would be foolish to expect anything resembling sanity. During Bachmann’s two day media blitz, she’s given Sarah Palin a run for Liar of the Year. Speaking of the ready for her closeup star, I thought we’d better get this out of the way before Sarah Palin steps all over Michele Bachmann. Yes, Sarah Palin is coming to Iowa tomorrow (President Obama will also be there) for the premiere of her movie, the “Undefeated”. Weeks ago, I posited that Palin would reappear when Bachmann was in Iowa; the lady does not veer far from the spotlight seeker trail. All hail the queen, etc. Back to Bachmann and that presidential candidacy announcement…..

OT (but relevant): Guys you know how it was reported that Karl Rove’s group American Crossroads was going to raise $20 million to go on an advertising blitz attacking President Obama in all 50 states? Well I just saw the first ad on TV and it is disgusting to say the least. Just imagining the drivel I watched being aired in all 50 states makes me mad to say the least. It was all lies, lies and more lies. Thanks to the Supreme Court groups like this don’t have to reveal their donor list. This is what is wrong with our political and judicial system. Democrats have got to ramp up ads in all 50 states from now until 2012 because President Obama cannot counter all this hate alone. Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney and the rest of their ilk aren’t human beings…… they’re lower than pond scum.

I think the “Are You A Flake?” question may become the new “I’m Not A Witch” pronouncement. Poor Chris Wallace, you can’t unring the bell. He asked the question (no matter how impolite) that is on the minds of so many people.

The Bachmann campaign is getting off to a rocky start. I guess she thought it was smooth sailing after that fake Republican debate. The media was all over her like a cheap suit saying how well she handled herself.

I am so glad she has announced her campaign. Now every stupid thing she has ever said and every stupid vote she ever cast will be scrutinized. She has a dismal record. Let the debunking begin. The woman just makes stuff up. She lies with such ease. She has to be hammered and called out for every lie she tells.